Dell Funds $100 Million in Discounts for Enterprise Partners

There’s nothing like big discounts to make channel partners feel the love. On the fifth anniversary of its PartnerDirect channel program, Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) has earmarked $100 million in a newly set-up special discount fund to dole out to eligible partners in North America during its fiscal Q4 ending Feb. 1, 2013.

Dell will grant the supplemental discounts based on how much money a partner has spent in the last five years on Dell’s enterprise solutions, according to the vendor. The discount applies to channel partners selling more than $100,000 in Dell enterprise solutions, namely, server, storage and networking equipment in the past five years. Solution providers will receive up to 5 percent of their sales of Dell enterprise equipment from Dec. 5 through Feb. 1, 2013, up to a ceiling based on how much the partner has spent in the past five years.

Mary Catherine Wilson, Dell North America Channel Marketing director, said the vendor will outline the program to some 500 channel partners attending its Dell World confab Dec. 11-13 in Austin, Texas.

“We wanted to celebrate our five years in the channel by recognizing the great partnerships we have built. $100 million has been earmarked to say thank you and we will celebrate with over 500 partners next week at Dell World,” she said. Partners’ local account managers can walk them through the process, Wilson said.

Dell has seen significant growth in PartnerDirect in the past five years, with about 115,000 channel members now signed on to the program. In a recent interview with The VAR Guy, chief executive Michael Dell said PartnerDirect has grown partly from adding partners from the vendor’s acquisitions. Dell said that in most countries partners account for at least 25 percent and as much as 50 percent of the vendor’s commercial business and in some places deliver 100 percent of the business. Dell’s expansion into new markets tends to be partner-driven and partner-centric, he said.

“We’ve now made it easier than ever for you to build your own campaigns and to leverage free content to maximize your own marketing dollars. You can spend your time doing what you do best--selling--instead of spending valuable time searching for collateral for a campaign,” said Samir Ahmad, Dell servers channel marketing manager, in a blog post.

Additional marketing materials such as videos, sales cards, spec sheets, social media assets (tweets, copy for Facebook and LinkedIn), are available to channel partners as well as training on Dell’s storage, networking and servers, according to Ahmad.

“Never before has Dell opened its doors so freely to partners. We’ve now made it easier than ever for you to build your own campaigns and to leverage free content to maximize your own marketing dollars,” said Ahmad.